The hotly anticipated Sarah Palin news conference in Miami at the Republican Governors conference this morning was a dud. She took four questions and dodged the whole time. Is she only willing to chat in a one-on-one situation? She certainly had no trouble opening up to Greta, Lauer, Wolf, Larry…
Sphere: Related ContentNot quite the jobs that most junkies expected her to publicly campaign for, however. In yet another interview with the mainstream media, Palin tells CNN’s Blitzer that she is hopeful that an Obama presidency is successful and that it would be her “honor” to “assist and support our new president” on areas she is knowledgeable in, specifically mentioning energy policy and special needs child care.
The Alaska governor said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that if Obama asked her for help on some of the issues she highlighted during this year’s campaign, such as energy or services for special-needs children, “It would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration.”
“And I speak for other Republicans and Republican governors, also,” said Palin, whom Sen. John McCain tapped as his running mate in August. “They would be willing also to seize this opportunity that we have to progress this nation together, in a united front.”
Still in some sort of pseudo-campaign mode, Palin did find the time to stop praising Obama and bring up the president-elect’s ties to “unrepentant domestic terrorist” Bill Ayers as a fact that the Alaska Governor is “still concerned” about. Palin was actually quite adamant about the need to explore the whole Ayers thing and vowed that she would “talk about it.”
But asked moments later about some of the tough rhetoric she hurled from the stump, she said she was “still concerned” about Obama’s ties to former Weather Underground member-turned-Chicago college professor William Ayers.
“If anybody still wants to talk about it, I will,” she said. “Because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol.
Anyone else awfully confused about Palin’s motives and schizophrenic messages in her recent blitz of media interviews? Palin demonizes the press as biased and unfair, then she eagerly laps up their ostensibly “negative” attention and gives interview after interview, keeping her name in the news on a relatively favorable basis and knocking the embarrassing revelations from McCain campaign insiders about her behavior during the late campaign.
Palin has found her best bud when it comes to image rehab in the MSM. The press loves juicy exclusives with a somewhat wacky celebrity - Sarah being a political celebrity makes it all the better.
Sphere: Related ContentWe’ll soon have a much deeper look into the startlingly vicious blood feud that was exploded into the media between the McCain and Palin camps after their humiliating loss on Tuesday. Until then, the various reports leaked and then counter-leaked by the two sides are just too juicy and too entertaining to pass up.
Must-see TV was the spot done by Carl Cameron of Fox News last night on the O’Reilly Factor, where he relayed information given to him by anonymous McCain loyalists that just savaged Palin and her intelligence, saying that she did not know Africa was a continent - not a country - and that she failed to name the signatories to NAFTA - that would be the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Cameron’s reporting on this has been just terrific, with his inside sources in the McCain camp cracking like iced glass over Palin’s supposed antics. Did we mention that she once met campaign strategists for a prep meeting wearing nothing more than a bath towel?
A New York Times article goes further into the sizzling fight. It details the long-running animosity between Palin and her confidantes against the inner circle of John McCain himself. It also sheds more light on what was possibly the most bizarre moment in the presidential campaign…
PHOENIX — As a top adviser in Senator John McCain’s now-imploded campaign tells the story, it was bad enough that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska unwittingly scheduled, and then took, a prank telephone call from a Canadian comedian posing as the president of France. Far worse, the adviser said, she failed to inform her ticketmate about her rogue diplomacy.
As a senior adviser in the Palin campaign tells the story, the charge is absurd. The call had been on Ms. Palin’s schedule for three days and she should not have been faulted if the McCain campaign was too clueless to notice.
Sphere: Related ContentWhatever the truth, one thing is certain. Ms. Palin, who laughingly told the prankster that she could be president “maybe in eight years,” was the catalyst for a civil war between her campaign and Mr. McCain’s that raged from mid-September up until moments before Mr. McCain’s concession speech on Tuesday night. By then, Ms. Palin was in only infrequent contact with Mr. McCain, top advisers said.
In a race where there are still loads - relatively speaking - of undecided voters both nationwide and in the battleground states, any glimmer of late movement among that fabled voting demographic could hold the key to the outcome of today’s election. While the conventional wisdom and secret McCain campaign “internal polls” suggest that McCain will be the chief beneficiary of the late undecideds, a last-minute CBS News poll finds that may not be the case. The culprit for McCain’s potential late-breaking agony? Sarah Palin.
There is evidence that Palin’s presence on the Republican ticket has hurt McCain with some voters. Fourteen percent of Obama’s supporters say they once supported McCain, and the top reason given for their switch was McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate.
While views of Palin have improved somewhat since last week, she continues fare worse than Biden when it comes to favorability. Today, 37 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of the Alaska governor, while the same percentage have an unfavorable view. Biden is viewed favorably by 43 percent and unfavorably by 21 percent.
These numbers are obviously not solely undecided voters or even voters in swing states. It’s a national poll and the question is so open-ended that the data could be mostly from voters who switched as soon as Palin was put on the ticket.
But that would mean they are most likely Hillary supporters who were initially flirting with backing McCain for the general. These types of working-class independents or even some conservative Democrats were seen as a potential wild card for McCain, breaking late for the GOP ticket in the face of 11th hour skepticism towards Obama and the possible success of the taxes argument featuring “Joe the Plumber.” It was in the dying small towns and old industrial areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania where these votes could come back to bite Obama, with the swing regions of these battlegrounds providing McCain with enough of an advantage to overcome anything but massive turnout in Dem-friendly locales.
Does McCain truly have a path to victory if Palin has already turned away 14% of potential swing voters? This data does not bode well for a campaign banking on en masse late breaks from undecideds.
Sphere: Related ContentThis is it. No more trail days or campaign rallies or chances to tout your proposals and slash your opponent after today. With Obama sitting somewhat comfortably atop a double-digit national lead, that leaves McCain the task of making up vitally important ground across several battleground states - all in one day.
With that deficit in mind, the McCain campaign is sending the GOP ticket across the country to almost every battleground states imaginable in a furious last-minute blitz to perhaps pick up some momentum and maybe convince enough undecided voters to flip the predicted results from Ohio to Nevada, Florida to Colorado.
Today’s scheduled stops for McCain and Sarah Palin are mind boggling. After a midnight rally in Miami, he went to a raucous event in Tampa before jetting off to East Tennessee (for the VA/NC mountain TV market) and then on to Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada. He will of course end the day preparing to head back to Arizona for Election Day.
Palin will be in Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. She will then board a plane for the long flight back to Anchorage, Alaska, where she will cast her vote tomorrow.
The ticket is obviously covering all of their bases and hitting the usual battlegrounds for this final effort. But it’s interesting to ponder where they are - and aren’t - stopping today.
McCain may be in the VA/NC market in Blountsville, TN, but he isn”t physically in either state. And the play in East Tennessee is for boosting enthusiasm and Election Day turnout among rural white conservatives, not the swing voters of the rest of those two states. Is it overconfidence that he has made up enough ground to ignore these battleground hotbeds and concentrate on base GOTV? Or is it resignation that the only way McCain retains these two red states is with maximum effort from the rural counties he will most certainly carry?
New Mexico and Iowa are generally conceded to Obama given his huge lead in the polls in both states. Yes, Obama did hold that mega-rally in Des Moines last week, but it was really more for nostalgia’s sake. And those cryptic “internal polls” from the McCain campaign that apparently show Mac closing fast in the Hawkeye State have yet to be seen by outsiders.
Sphere: Related ContentThe last set of Quinnipiac battleground polls for the uber-swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania show virtually no legitimate movement among the numbers for McCain and Obama, with the Dem nominee remaining ahead by varying margins in all three states.
Parsing these final numbers finds that Obama has several advantages even as the races do tighten a bit and the McCain campaign touts their own internal polls showing their candidate gaining in key demographics. Obama is way ahead of McCain in Florida and Ohio early voting, has fairly big leads among independents (although a bit smaller than 2-3 weeks ago) and is beating McCain in most important demo’s outside of white voters.
Two specific problem for McCain show up in these Q numbers and in virtually every poll - national or battleground - done since late September. He is getting slaughtered on the economy - which remains the overwhelmingly most important issue for voters - and is getting dragged down due to spiking unfavorables for running mate Sarah Palin. The most generous of the numbers have her favorables at a 45-45 split. That is much worse than Joe Biden’s numbers and far below McCain and Obama favorability data.
Last note on the economy: According to Q, even Pennsylvania voters, bombarded by “Joe the Plumber” and McCain’s attacks on higher taxes and “spread the wealth,” say by a 53% to 40% margin that Obama is the best candidate to handle the economy. Mac has a good argument, it’s just that voters are already tuned out.
Sphere: Related ContentThe lead is still very strong and well over 10 points for Barack Obama in the latest Newsweek national poll. Obama is ahead of McCain 53% to 40% with less than two weeks until Election Day.
Demo by demo it looks very good for Obama. He is now leading in every age and class group - even over-65 and working-class whites. Obama’s favorable number continues to shoot up, eclipsing 60% in the new poll while his unfavorable number is down at 32%. And Sarah Palin is hurting McCain, encumbering the GOP nominee with a running mate who is universally disliked by most voters.
There are concerns for Obama and silver linings for McCain in Newsweek. The McCain campaign attack line about “Joe the Plumber” and the potential for huge tax increases on small businesses under Obama has made an impression with both working-class and middle-class voters.
McCain’s attempt to raise anxiety about Obama’s economic policies—with his relentless focus on Joe the Plumber and his suggestion that an Obama presidency could usher in an era of socialism—seems to have had some effect with working-class voters. In the poll, 39 percent of working-class and poor whites said they would list as a major concern the fear that Obama’s tax plans could hurt small business. The McCain attacks seem to have had a larger impact with middle class and high-income voters, 48 percent of whom deem Obama’s tax policies a major concern.
But Obama is still leading both of those voter groups overall, despite obvious skepticism over the “spreading the wealth” controversy. McCain’s running mate and his inability to handle the economy are more impressive drags on his poll numbers than any of the “Joe” attacks are on Obama.
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